She Said You Listened
by SwimmingEqualsLiving
Summary: Celia Dynsman recieves a letter from someone who goes by the name Charlie, and, even though "Charlie" is just a kid, she takes his stories and lessons to heart with her life and her work as a literary agent, publishing stories.
1. You Recieve A Letter

**Greetings, Wallflowers. Yes, this is technically my first story, but my old account got deleted. So you can trust that I have some previous experience in these types of situations. Now this story is about YOU. Not me, not Charlie (well kind of about Charlie), YOU. I've always had the thought that the "friend" Charlie was writing to was us, so this is the story of YOU, receiving Charlie's letters. So, for the time being, YOU are Celia Dynsman. This might suck, OR, it might rock. You tell me. Enjoy. **

I resist waking up. Why? Because it sucks. My eyes are all crusted and you still got a bit of makeup on from the night before and everyone calls me "sunshine" and pisses me off. I guess people will never figure out that I am simply not a morning person. I let out a sigh and sit up, throwing the room into a whirlwind.

My fluffy pink robe and slippers are essential for me to start my day, but no, that stupidly smarter past self thought of putting them at the exact point where I have to get up and put them on. Then, my genius brain comes up with the perfect plan. So, in spite of… myself, I guess, I roll out of bed, literately, and army crawl towards my robe and slippers. I achieve a strong sense of victory once I grab the soft fabric.

"Ha-ha! Take that…me…" yep, it's official, I'm crazy. Oh well, I live alone, in a small apartment just outside of New York City, and I am basically the loneliest person in the universe. My ex-roommate\ best friend moved out after she got married, leaving me with my toaster waffles, online dating sites and gargantuan bills to pay.

Today, I decide, will be different. Today will be fun. So I dash downstairs because I'm suddenly in a happy mood, and grab a pop tart. I decide I won't be late to work today, and I decide that I am _not_ going to stop at the mall after work. I need the cash. Bad. So I change, and put on the special makeup that I got by mixing together multiple colors. This problem wouldn't be there if my eyes were the same colors, but no, blue _and_ green eyes for me. I won't let this daily hindrance ruin my morning though, I have a new client coming in at work today, and I am going to screw with her mind.

So, nibbling on my blueberry pop tart, I make sure all the windows are sealed and locked; grab my keys, my cell and my purse as I walk out the door (being very careful to lock it). My high heels make a _clack_ against the pavement on the way to the subway station. They go down the stairs at the station sideways, because that's how I handle stairs… sideways. I slip my pass into the box next to the turnstile, having flashback/nightmares of the time it didn't pop back out. But no, I push through the turnstile and there it is, on the other side of the box, my shiny ticket awaits me. I snatch it up without stopping. My mind always says that I'm going to be late to catch the subway, but I never am. Today is no exception. I rush, using my waning acting skills to look super stressed, so people think that whatever you are doing is more important than them, and they will make way for me. I'm kind of a genius like that. I step over that small gap between platform and train, avoiding a tragedy every time.

0o0o0o0

I've wanted to be a literary agent/editor since I was fifteen. I've always loved to write, but I have loved to read just a little bit more. It was a dream, a goal, getting a partial essay scholarship to Dartmouth certainly helped. And now I am one of Harper Teen Books top agents at only 27 years old. Known for my crazy methods and creativity, I am never doubted. My name is in at least 70 acknowledgements in books across the globe. Young first time authors wait for months for appointments with me, the one and only Celia Dynsman, literary agent to the _stars_. Not to mention the all the letters you get from kid authors, begging for their first shot at the published world. I arrive at my mildly air conditioned office. Exhausted, I throw my jacket onto my desk and collapse into my chair. I wheel around your desk then over to my door, next to witch is my intercom, I press the button and, with my face clearly too close to the speaker, say "Martha, when's my client coming?"

"Joyce Arigon will be arriving around 11:45." Martha answers. Its ten thirty right now, I should have enough time to set up your office for my client, but not enough time to go get breakfast. "Martha?" I say to my intercom in a whining voice. "Martha can you be a saint and grab me some lunch, you know the place that serves that thing."

Martha sighs into the intercom "What would you do without me?"

"Is that a yes?" I say with hope creeping into my voice.

"I'll be back with food in twenty."

"Extra Ketchup please!" I yell because you can tell she's about to walk away.

And with that I get to work on my office.

I find some leftover string and tape. I grab the books from my bookshelf and start taping one end of the string to the spines. I remove my shoes, stand up on the plush squishy chair, grab some paperclips and hook them onto the ceiling the way I see most second grade teachers do when they want to hang their students art work. I also take two pieces of smaller string and tie them to the covers of the book, connecting those ends to the string coming out from the spine, making the pages hang out and the covers wide open above them. Finally, I hang the books from the ceiling. I end with a bunch of books, bearing a great resemblance to birds in flight, flying above us. I contemplate rapping my head in tinfoil for that added "crazy" look, but I decide not, I do, after all, want this client.

Martha arrives with my early lunch. She walks in the room, holding the paper bag and my mail.

"Thanks." I say, she sits down at my desk and eats with me. "Martha," she looks up from her food, lettuce in her mouth, but gestures me to go on, "You're looking for an apartment, right?"

"Mhm." She nods and swallows. "I can't stand the dorms anymore." Martha is a lit major right now, who says she just can't live with her roommate.

"Well…" I say with a smile creeping on my face, "my roommate moved out, why don't you come live with me?"  
"I'll think about it… oh and here's your mail." She hands me a small stack of letters, the rest is in the junk box in the office. Martha just finds what's good.

After sorting through stuff, I find a letter, addressed specifically to me, with no return address. I raise it up in my hand, sending Martha a puzzling look.

She shrugs, "Looked interesting."

"Well," I say with a sigh after finishing my chicken sandwich, "thank you for lunch, and please, please, _please _consider my offer of moving in with me." And with that, Martha leaves the room.

After a while, curiosity takes over, and, with fifteen minutes left until my client arrives, I read the anonymous letter.

_Dear friend,_

_ I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand…_

**Okay, that did take a while to get to the POBAW part; I hope I didn't lose too many people in the time being. Hope you loved it. OH and I do not own:**

**-The Perks of Being a Wallflower**

**-Harper Teen Books**

**-Pop Tarts**

**-A gumdrop eating unicorn/monkey hybrid**

**Thanks for reading and PLEASE review!**

** * Nota al margen. He creado una versión en español de la serie, realmente espero que yo no asesiné a la versión española, y hecho más fácil para mis lectores españoles.**


	2. You Freak Out Some New Authors

**Salutations Wallflowers! I'm really quite happy of the results from chapter 1, so here is the long overdue Chapter 2!**

_Love always,_

_ Charlie._

Wow. Just… wow.

I need a second to process all of this. There's something wrong with this… this… Charlie. Is this some sicko's idea of a book proposal? If so, I would buy it. But this feels more… intimate, more real, if you will. I get this weird feeling that somewhere, someone is going through this.

I find it admirable that Charlie is anonymously writing to deal with his feelings, but I do not recommend it for his situation. I worry for him. I had a rough past, I contemplated – there's that word again… suicide. But I had help. I had my friends to pull me through, and if Charlie has to result to writing to a complete stranger, he definitely doesn't have the same social life that I was lucky enough to have.

I shake myself of the terrible, reoccurring memories and worries. I paste a smile on my face to cheer myself up. I need to prepare for my client; she'll be here any minute.

I fix the book birds and make my desk nice and messy. I kneel down on the rug in front of my desk, flatten out my skirt, and gently lay down. I spread my hair out around my head. I fold my arms around my waist. I close my eyes, and pretend I'm floating in a placid ocean, with no risk of drowning.

I hear the door click, and I hide my excitement as I hear discount high heels stop in their tracks.

I've played this trick a few times before, and mostly I get a couple "Are you okay"s and one time, a client just shimmied out of the room, not saying a word. None of them were that fun.

So Joyce Arigo just stopped. For one last second, I was extremely curious as to how she would react. I fight every nerve in my body as I lay there. I hear a rustling, and a subtle thunk of a small object in the corner. I feel a presence next to me.

So, being as Zen as possible, I slowly turn my head and lift my eyelids. I see Joyce, lying on the itchy, uncomfortable rug, her eyes focused up at the Book Bird above her.

"You know," I start, Joyce is still focused on the bird, but I can tell she's listening, "Julius Cicero once said: 'A room without books is like a body without a soul.'"

Joyce takes a deep breath and recites, "Birds…scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth. They know the truth. Screaming bloody murder all over the world in our ears, but sadly we don't speak bird."

I smile, this girl is something different.

Joyce sits up and says simply, "Kurt Cobain."

I sit up also; I raise myself to a standing position and walk towards my desk. I gestures for her to sit in the chair across from my desk. I flatten down my hair and turn into "Miss Dynsman, business extraordinaire."

"So," I half sigh, half tell her, "What do you have for me?"

She plops down a big stack of computer paper, they are stapled, but it's not all one unit, it's three or four.

"I brought you four books today." She says professionally with a smile. She spreads them out on my desk, facing me.

She points to one titled "The Bucket List". Beneath it is a summary of how they're just a bunch of college students trying to live.

"It's an adventure-romance kind of thing. Three friends are travelling throughout the country trying to fulfill this girl, Dianne's, bucket list."

I think about it for a moment. "Why?" I ask simply. Joyce tilts her head in confusion. I try to go easy on first time clients, so I put it lightly.

"Why would they do this now? What's the motive? Does Di have two years to live, and if that is the case, why focus on fulfilling some child hood bucket list? Why not get a heart transplant or something?"

Joyce nods, and with a subtle look of disappointment on her face, she points to another pack.

It's titled "Whitewashed."

"It's a high stakes, apocalyptic drama novel."

I press my lips together and repress a sigh. I flip through the pages, read a little bit into the first page, and try to go easy on Julie.

"Ooh, sorry sweetie. The characters seem really well developed, that I know, but… well, you remember the apocalypse scare on December 21st of 2012?"

Joyce nods with a look of determination on her face. I'm glad this client can take a critique.

"See, now it's 2013. Everyone was totally into those apocalypse novels back before the 21st, but after the world didn't end, it took off the edge of any apocalypse related media. When you go into a book, you've got to make it timeless."

She nods and squints a little, she points to the next stack of papers. "Of Paint and Tears".

"An adventure novel," Julie starts, "An orphan and a foster child are chosen to be crusaders of time. You see, time has been altered, but the reality that we are living in now, is altered. And it is Sam and Victoria's job to fix history."

I bring a hand to my mouth, I'm confused here. Something just doesn't seem right.

"I just… I just don't think it's… right. You're a debut author, and we have to make your story… bigger. We have to make it insanely relatable and totally pinpointed towards the demographic you want. If you 'miss' a demographic, which means you don't appeal to whom you want it to, you can't just pass it off as that demographic it ended up appealing to. They'll catch on to those kinds of things. Readers are smarter than you think." I finish with a knowing smile.

"We'll reconsider it as a second series." I assure.

She picks up the corner of her mouth and gently pushes the last book to me.

"The Army of Victims is a book about bullied kids at a severely dysfunctional high school coming together and starting a revolution to stop bullying. Now I know what you're thinking, and no. This book is not cliché and predictable. There is heartbreak and cheating and lies. There is a real, relatable, not barfable story in there."

Her eyes are glistening and brimming with hope. Something about that just fills me with happiness. I guess I miss those days where I was so young, waiting for that big break.

I can't help but smile as I ask "Tell me about the characters."

I see her light up as she says, "Well, I guess I'll just explain them in chronological order… Lucy is just a quiet little nerd with a talent for blending in. Then there's Nahant, an honest, gentle, and new Indian student. Nahant pays for seeing something he wasn't supposed to see. Now, Callie was the school's skank, and after some interesting texts from her to another boy get out, she turns quickly into the school's joke. Winfrey's mom is a hoarder, and when his girlfriend found out, she sold out and told everyone…" She flips through the book a little more, but I don't need it, I'm swimming in good feelings about this book.

"Say no more." I interrupt her, holding up my hand. "I love it. We have got to make this book published."

I let her go into her fit of euphoria, but right now I can't focus on people celebrating, I have to read more of this draft. I snatch it off of the stack, and immediately read the first page.

_"I'll… um… need a handwriting sample…" I sheepishly tell Rodney. He stares down at me with a perplexed expression._

_ "What's that?" He asks. _

_ I quietly sigh (so that I won't offend someone like Rodney Shefa) and hand him a notepad and a pencil. "Just write down your name, numbers one through ten, locker number and…" I struggle to draw the saying from my memory, "The five boxing wizards jump quickly." _

_ Rod raises an eyebrow quizzically. "It has every letter in the alphabet." I answer quickly. He nods and silently scribbles down what I asked. _

_ "So… anything lower than a C+ is free?" He asks. _

_ I nod, "And just slip the cash into my locker, the number of which is always in the bottom left corner of the first page, I recommend erasing it once you know it though." _

_ "Alright then. Hey, good luck with that, I can't believe you're sticking to the C+ rule with Mrs. Aths' review sheets."_

_ I can't help but laugh a little at this, "I'm sure I can handle remedial biology."_ _I quickly catch myself, a little homework nerd like me is certainly not allowed to openly mock once of the school's biggest jocks' intelligence. He rips off the paper with his handwriting and hands that and the assignment to me._

_ "Thanks Laura, catcha later." He says, clapping me on the shoulder as he exits the Performing Arts Center, or the PAC. _

_ "It's Lucy…" I whisper. _

_ "Yeah, whatever." He says, not bothering to even turn around. _

_ I head up to my seat in the corner of the theater, and rattle off the answers to his biology review easily. Is it legal to teach a high school senior this? Shouldn't they be learning something only a _little_ bit more advanced? _

_ I'm done in a matter of minutes. It's my free period, so of course, I've got thirty more minutes until I have Drama class. I have my _Psychology in the Theater _book with me already, so all I have to do is drop off this paper at Rodney's locker. I don't check over my work on Rodney's paper, it's good for someone like Rodney to have a couple mistakes, so that Mrs. Aths doesn't get suspicious. _

_ I stand from the cushy auditorium seats, and the bottom of the seat flips up with a "_fwap". _I rush down the stairs from my seat in the top corner of the room, and take another look at Rodney's locker number, D389, and make my way into the commons. The hallways are ghostly, scattered with a few people also on their free period, a few stoners sit against the lockers, laughing about something that wouldn't be funny if they weren't high. I pass a couple making out in a way too inappropriate for even the thought of education, and make a left. _

_ I spot Rodney standing very close to the quiet, solemn Indian student, Nahant. He has Nahant's black hair in a fist, pushed against the lockers. Rodney's muscles have tensed, and I see the vain popping out on his bicep. _

_ "I swear, if you tell anyone about… what you saw." Rodney is very close, I'm hiding behind the corner, and he is about ten feet away. So I hear his threatening voice through gritted teeth, getting louder. _

_ "I will _waste _you!" Rodney brings his fistful of Nahant's hair forward and slams his head back against the locker. Rodney lets go of Nahant's hair, leaving him to slide down the locker and seated on the linoleum. _

_ For a moment, Rodney and Nahant just stare at each other, in pure silence. Nahant looks as though he is about to cry, but he still manages to barely say to Rodney "It's okay."_

_ With that, Nahant gives up. He lay down on the floor, his cheek pressing against the tiles. Apparently, Rodney gives up too. Tears flow down Rodney's cheek as he violently kicks Nahant._

_ "No…" He grunts through the first kick._

_ "It's…" He kicks Nahant again, with more vigor. _

_ "Not!" Rodney kicks Nahant with so much strength; Nahant is flattened against the bottom of the locker. _

_ That's it, Nahant lets out a cry, and I rush over to them. I shove Rodney weakly on the shoulders, just enough to get him away from Nahant's shivering frame. _

_ "What?" He asks irritably. He turns toward me and I take what's in my hand, ironically, his homework, and rip it up into unrecoverable shreads. _

_ Rodney stares at me; he lets out a chuckle, and stabs a finger towards my face, "You will regret this."_

_ He saunters down the hallway, leaving me with a shiver Nahant and my lonely thoughts._

_ I see the tears streak down his cheeks._

**That was… long. I hoped you loved it. Thank you for all the positive response!**

** * Nota al margen. He creado una versión en español de la serie, realmente espero que yo no asesiné a la versión española, y hecho más fácil para mis lectores españoles.**


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